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The Christian group, Core Issues Trust, which recently held a ‘Transformation Potential’ conference in London, discussing conversion therapy, has lodged an official complaint with the UK General Medical Council (GMC), objecting that the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP), one of the most renowned bodies in the field of psychiatry, maintain that all sexuality is “biological in nature and fixed at birth”. (RCP)

Core Issues Trust had adverts banned from London buses in 2012, which read “Not gay! Ex-gay, post-gay and proud. Get over it!” The High Court upheld the decision by Transport for London to pull the adverts, as did Mr Justice Lang for the Court of Appeal. Despite these decisions Core Issues Trust still maintain that the decision by TFL to remove the adverts was influenced by Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, trying to gain gay votes.

The Trust are lodging the complaint on the grounds that they believe that the RCP view is “discrimination” against people “who experience homosexual feelings but wish to reduce them”. They have further claimed that the RCP has since stated that homosexuality is “neither inborn nor unchangeable”.

One of the complainants, Doctor Peter May, a former General Practitioner in Southampton, a member of the General Synod of the Church of England, and an apparent believer in miracles (see his entries at: http://www.cmf.org.uk/publications/authors/?id=173), stated “There is good evidence that sexual orientation can change. Yet the largest UK providers of psychotherapy and counselling, including the UK Council for Psychotherapy and the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, have all made ethical policy statements, banning any therapy which seeks to facilitate such a change.”

Professor Sir Simon Wessely, President of the RCP, countered in an interview with the BBC, “The Royal College of Psychiatrists notes that homosexuality is not a psychiatric disorder. There is a large body of research evidence that indicates that being gay, lesbian or bisexual is compatible with normal mental health and social adjustment.” Professor Wessely concluded, “We consider that the provision of any intervention to ‘treat’ normal sexuality is unethical.”

Should we be worried, dears? Not in the least. Indeed, I am more than happy for the Core Issues Trust to bring this complaint before the GMC. Dr May maintains that he has evidence that sexuality can be changed. I say bring it on.

Dr May and the Core Issue Trust are effectively lodging a complaint against science itself; science which has been peer-reviewed and which has overwhelming empirical evidence to support it. “conversion therapy” has conclusively been proven to be a complete and total failure, with ‘patients’ reverting to homosexuality, suffering depression and other mental trauma, and even committing suicide in some cases. That is precisely why some Christian groups in the USA who supported and carried out such practices later renounced it.

So, I say that the Core Issues Trust have done the best thing they ever could in lodging this complaint. I for one cannot wait to see them roundly and thoroughly defeated – as they shall be – in the hearing, made to look the laughing stock they are, and the quackery which is “conversion therapy” consigned to the scientific dustbin where it belongs, once and for all.

As the motto of the Royal College of Psychiatrists says, “Let wisdom guide”.